For centuries the most revered poem in the Western literary
canon, Vergil's Aeneid celebrates the Roman virtue of pietas. In
the preface to his English translation of the poem, John Dryden
attempts to explain all that this virtue includes: "Piety alone,"
he writes, "comprehends the whole Duty of Man towards the Gods,
towards his Country, and towards his Relations." Dryden's
definition belongs to a dialogue about meaning that reflects a
history of contention over religious, political, and moral issues
of enduring cultural significance. Because it is the site of
antagonism between pagan and Christian, republican and imperialist,
emperor and pope, Protestant and Catholic, pietas and its
derivatives in the modern languages bring to literary works
multiple contexts of ideological dispute. This book traces the
history of the Vergilian ideal from classical Latin to neoclassical
English literature. In the process of, it comparatively engages
interpretation of a range of literary works diversely responsive to
the Aeneid from the histories and historical epics of the Silver
Age, to the medieval mirrors for magistrates, to Renaissance
adaptations of Aeneid 4 and 12, and finally to Dryden's complete
translation.
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